MORGANTOWN - West Virginia's defense covers the entire court, all 94 feet between the baselines and 50 feet between the sidelines. That's not the goal, though.
The 10th-ranked Mountaineers wear teams down, and the plan is to use all 40 minutes to chip away at opponents so they're at their weakest at the end. But that's not the reality.
They actually shorten games from the front, getting into the opposition's head before a game and finding a lead soon after it starts. They squeeze opponents into dangerous places on the floor before they pounce. They are constrictors, and they look like one of the most dangerous predators in the country.
You need all 2,400 seconds and 4,700 square feet to beat the Mountaineers, and they're not going to give that to you.
"That's kind of what we preach," coach Bob Huggins said. "Every team I've had that pressed has turned people over more after the ball got across halfcourt than they did in the frontcourt, because we shrink the court. You don't have to cover as much ground. And that's been our message to them about the last three weeks. We've got to start shrinking the court better. We've got to make the court smaller."
That's not especially complicated. Imagine playing tag in a hallway and in a backyard. Imagine hide-and-seek in an apartment and a mansion.
Consider that Nathan Adrian and Jevon Carter are the two most valuable parts of the defense. Adrian is 6-foot-9, Carter is 7 inches shorter. Adrian stands in the middle at the front of the press, and he escorts dribblers to one side of the court. Carter seems to chase dribblers a lot, but it's not because he's slow.
Adrian and Carter are leading the ball-handlers to where the Mountaineers seek to greet them. Get them to one side on one half of the court, and suddenly the offense is stuck on one quarter of the floor and can only escape to another. WVU is ready and waiting with double-teams and traps. That's not full-court pressure. That's just WVU's defense.
The Mountaineers (14-2, 3-1 Big 12) will try to turn teams over. If they can't, they'll try some more, but the focus is to keep an opponent from running its offense. It takes so much time and caution to get out of danger that there isn't much of either left to run a perfect play and score two or three points.
"If you'd have said before the game, 'You're going to have 29 turnovers,' I wouldn't have believed you, even knowing how good their pressure is, but they just took us out of everything," Baylor coach Scott Drew said after his No. 1-ranked Bears lost to the Mountaineers 89-68 Tuesday night at the WVU Coliseum.
It's devastating. Baylor had 68 points - and 12 came in the final 2:21, after WVU took a 26-point lead and commenced an in-game celebration - and only 12 assists. The 29 turnovers were the most ever against a Big 12 opponent, and 15 came on steals.
"Ball pressure," WVU guard Tarik Phillip said. "They only had a couple good ball-handlers we saw on film, so we said when certain guys got the ball, we were going to heat them up and make them make plays."
The Bears (15-1, 3-1) are hardly inept, even if they committed 17 more turnovers than they were averaging. Yet they were interchangeably hopeless and helpless. There were travels and bad passes, none worse than reliable Ishmail Wainright sending one 5 feet over a teammate's head and three rows deep into the student section, but there was a travel and a charge, there were two carrying calls and two 10-second violations for failing to cross mid-court in time.
And a lot if it happened early. The Bears were at their turnover average with 9:39 left in the first half. The deficit reached double figures three minutes earlier. They knew they were going to encounter the press and the consequences, and when it happened, the Bears were undeniably rattled.
Baylor knew it could happen - "It's not easy to play against," Drew said, "and it's not easy to simulate." - and the truth of playing against WVU's defense is the clock starts in practice days before the game. Teams know the preparation will only help so much. It's one thing to know it's going to happen. It's another to have it happen and then have no counter.
Opponents enter games with their tips and their tactics. They've been taught how to handle their scout-team teammates in practice. But that's not the scout team and those aren't teammates in gold, blue or white when the game begins. Those are players good enough to be on scholarship and to start or contribute for a top-10 team.
"A lot if it is energy, just energy and concentration," Huggins said. "Everyone tells me after they play us that you can't simulate our foot speed."
WVU's scoring margin is plus-28.3 points per game, and that's the best in the country, but that's half the story. The first-half scoring margin is plus-16.4 - and that includes the crazy 20-point deficit against Temple. The Mountaineers are 13-0 when they lead by at least 10 points, and 12 of those leads came before halftime. It's hard to come back against WVU's intensity. It's harder to do that and then to stay in the game, and the longer opponents have to do that, the better it is for the Mountaineers.
Contact Mike Casazza at 304-319-1142 or mikec@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @mikecasazza and read his blog at http://blogs.wvgazettemail.com/wvu/.